Olivier (61 page)

Laurence Olivier died on 11 July, 1989. He had been ill, off and on, for more than twenty years, his dying had been protracted – but his death still left an immense gap in the world of anyone connected with the theatre. “When he died, it was to me such a division,” said Rosemary Harris. “It was like during Larry and after Larry … When he died, suddenly, the pinnacle wasn’t there, there wasn’t anybody at the top.” Something had gone which could never be replaced. “When the realisation has sunk in I might manage a tear,” John Dexter wrote in his diary; “at the moment I feel a gigantic space which no-one can occupy.”
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The funeral was held in the tiny twelfth-century church of St James’s in the Sussex village of Ashurst. It was to be strictly private: family, a very few neighbours and close friends. “Private” can mean a multitude of things. When the few close friends include Douglas Fairbanks, Alec Guinness, Maggie Smith, John Mills, Franco Zeffirelli, it is inevitable that the event will attract attention. The press were there in force, outnumbering the congregation, but they behaved with rare decorum: the paparazzi, who had so often mobbed Olivier during his life, left him at peace in death.

If Olivier’s funeral was, by his standards, a modest and domestic affair, all the stops were out when it came to the memorial service. First there was some indecorous jostling between Westminster Abbey and St Paul’s. The Abbey was delighted to hold a memorial service, but regretted that there could be no question of deeming him worthy of interment in Poets’ Corner until at least ten years after his death. The family made some hurried enquiries and announced that fortunately St Paul’s was able to provide both a memorial service and a burial site. It would be nice for Olivier to lie alongside Garrick and Irving, but if that could not be managed Nelson would do. Westminster Abbey reconsidered its position and decided that, in the circumstances, an exception could be made. It is a telling indication of Olivier’s stature that the two greatest
religious institutions in the land should have vied for the honour of housing his remains.

The service was fixed for 20 October, leaving plenty of time to make the arrangements. Every minute was needed. It was conducted on the most lavish scale: with pomp and circumstance but without pomposity or ostentation, in a style which the Church of England manages with singular skill. If ostentation did creep in, it was when a cortège of Olivier’s theatrical associates processed up the aisle to lay trophies representing his various achievements before the altar. Douglas Fairbanks carried the insignia of the Order of Merit; Michael Caine his Oscar for Lifetime Achievement; Maggie Smith a silver model of the theatre in Chichester; Paul Scofield a similar model of the National Theatre; Derek Jacobi the crown used in the film of “Richard III”; Peter O’Toole the script used in the film of “Hamlet”; Ian McKellen the laurel wreath worn in the Stratford “Coriolanus”; Dorothy Tutin the crown from Granada’s “King Lear”; and Frank Finlay Kean’s sword – the one which Gielgud had presented to Olivier. Ralph Richardson had died a few years before; John Gielgud himself was unfit to take part in the procession, but he sat by the High Altar viewing the proceedings, perhaps with a touch of disapproval. According to his biographer, he thought the service unduly ostentatious and left instructions that nothing of the sort should be attempted when he died. “Public celebrations are awfully embarrassing,” he said, “they’ve become society functions.” To Irene Worth he was more charitable. The service, he wrote, “was a tremendous affair, extremely well organised and hugely attended, of course”. Peggy Ashcroft and he had read poems, Alec Guinness had made a “memorably clever and appropriate speech” and Joan Plowright had “behaved most dignifiedly and hosted a fine party at the National”. One sharp comment he did allow himself: a friend who had watched it on television had remarked that it should have been held not in the Abbey but in Drury Lane.
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The Abbey is not well suited to intimate occasions. Whatever the event may be, its services verge on the theatrical; when a theatrical
demi-god is being honoured it is bound to be doubly so. Yet there was nothing meretricious or flamboyant about the Dean’s bidding prayer:

N
early thirty years ago I completed a biography of Admiral of the Fleet Earl Mountbatten of Burma. Time and again as I worked on Laurence Olivier I was struck by the similarities between the two men, whose lives followed very different trajectories yet whose personalities were in so many ways the same.

Mountbatten and Olivier were natural leaders. In his film “In Which We Serve” Noël Coward, a close friend of both men, portrayed Mountbatten as Captain Kinross, in command of a destroyer in the Second World War. “I want my ship to be a happy ship,” Kinross/Mountbatten famously declared. He wanted his ship to be a happy ship because happy ships were more likely to be efficient ships but also because he had a strong sense of belonging and mutual responsibility. The crew were like an extended family: he took it for granted that they would be loyal and would respect, admire, even love him. He felt the same for them. Olivier wanted the National Theatre to be a happy theatre: he knew everyone, took an interest in everyone, consciously fostered a sense of community. Both men were adored by the people who worked under them.

Both men were inordinately ambitious. Mountbatten was sixteen when he announced that he would one day follow his father as First Sea Lord, professional head of the British Navy; Olivier was only a few years older when he said that he intended to be the greatest actor in the world. To achieve their ends they both thrust upward, paying little heed to the victims of their progress. Mountbatten may have been adored by his men, but the contemporaries over whose heads he jumped were
decidedly less enthusiastic about his qualities. Richardson, Gielgud, Redgrave, Scofield, all paid tribute to Olivier’s transcendent skills, but disparaging comments were not infrequent when it came to discussion of his personality.

Both were obsessed by detail. Nobody would deny that Mountbatten was capable of viewing the picture as a whole; the creative force behind the National Theatre could hardly be accused of taking the narrow view; but given half a chance they would each have accepted responsibility for every tiny technicality. Mountbatten had views on what equipment each infantryman should carry when he stormed the beaches of Normandy; Olivier would interfere in the choice of make-up worn by the humblest member of his casts. Nothing was so small that they found it unworthy of their attention.

In large part this was because neither man could bear not to be in complete control. Of course one cannot run a giant enterprise without accepting the need to delegate, but both men did it with reluctance, both preferred subordinates who did not have too many ideas of their own; who were content to carry out the policies dictated from on high; who were, in fact, wholly unlike Mountbatten and Olivier.

Both men were courageous, both physically and morally. At sea, Mountbatten took it for granted that he should take as many, if not more risks than any man aboard. The chapter of Olivier’s accidents is grisly evidence that he never allowed considerations of pain or danger to deflect him from what he felt would be, theatrically, the most effective course. Both men loved to be loved, which meant that they did not lightly court unpopularity; but if they felt a course was necessary they would force it through regardless of the rancour they might stir up among those who were the victims of their decisions.

Both men were unscrupulous in profiting by and taking credit for the deeds and ideas of others. Olivier was, on the whole, more ready to give credit where credit was due, but both could quickly convince themselves that, though a contribution might have been made by others, the principal distinction was deserved by them. Often, far more often than
in the case of more ordinary mortals, their pretensions were justified. Sometimes they were not.

Both men were capable of petty jealousy. They were upset when they saw someone doing something better, or even as well as they themselves could do it. Mountbatten was put out when one of the generals under his command in South East Asia was acclaimed for some striking successes. Olivier admitted that he could not bear to watch somebody play a part which he had played himself in case they in some way surpassed his achievements. Both men could be generous in their judgments of others but were less happy when it came to direct comparisons with themselves.

Both men possessed extravagant charm. Mountbatten was the more skilled in the presentation of a case – he would have been a formidable barrister – but they were both likely to prevail even if they were in the wrong because of the force of their personalities and their capacity to please. Confronted with the full blast of their persuasive powers, only the most resolute could resist.

Olivier got greater pleasure from sex than Mountbatten did, but for neither was it a matter of overriding importance. Except perhaps for a brief period when he was extravagantly in love with Vivien Leigh, Olivier would never have allowed the demands of sex to interfere with his career. As for Mountbatten, he would have rated his polo playing almost as high as his sexual relationships and neither would have been allowed to mar his professional progress.

Neither had much in the way of cultural hinterland. Neither read books unless they were directly related to their other activities, neither looked at pictures; Olivier knew more about music, but it did not play a significant part in his life. Mountbatten was more involved with politics, but only because politicians were important in the success or failure of his career; neither man held any strong political convictions. Both men, if asked, would have said that they were practising Christians and active members of the Church of England; for neither did religion hold any real significance.

Of course one can find ways in which they differed. Olivier, for instance, had the ability to turn down the power and become, almost literally, invisible. He could become Mr Nobody from Nowhere-in-Particular and blend with the crowd. Mountbatten’s power was permanently at full blast; his headlights never dipped, still less did he resort to sidelights. “Off” was the alternative position, and that could only be achieved by sleep or death.

But the resemblances are far more striking. Mountbatten and Olivier must have met each other: both were present, for instance, at Noël Coward’s seventieth birthday party. There is no record, however, of any encounter of consequence. If there had been such a meeting they would have recognised themselves as birds of a feather and, since they had no conceivable reason to be jealous of each other, would probably have got on very well. The last sentence in my biography of Mountbatten reads: “He flared brilliantly across the face of the twentieth century; the meteor is extinguished but its glow lingers on in the mind’s eye.” The same words would serve well for Olivier. Perhaps, however, one might better leave him with the lines from Byron which he inscribed at the back of one of his pre-war pocket diaries:

Thy day without a cloud hath pass’d.
And thou wert happy to the last;
Extinguish’d, not decay’d;
As stars that shoot along the sky
Shine brightest as they fall from high.

Decay rather than sudden extinction was to be his lot, but the glow that lingered after his fall burns brilliantly to this day.

By far the most important collection of manuscripts concerning Laurence Olivier is to be found in the British Library. This contains not only his voluminous personal correspondence and diaries and a remarkably comprehensive assembly of papers relating to his time at the National Theatre but also notebooks covering his time at Chichester and the tour of Australasia, the draft of the biography by his sister Sybille which was suppressed on his instructions and the tapes of the interviews conducted by Gawn Grainger which provide the basis for his book
On Acting.

Other collections of papers in the British Library which have proved invaluable for this book are those of John Gielgud, Ralph Richardson and Kenneth Tynan. Michael Redgrave’s papers are in the Theatre Museum. The most important of the holdings of the National Theatre Archive are duplicated in Olivier’s own papers but some more detailed material is available there.

As indicated in the Acknowledgements, Olivier’s widow, Joan Plowright, retains a certain number of valuable papers while his eldest son Tarquin, his friend Derek Granger and Vivien Leigh’s biographer, Hugo Vickers, all possess important collections of manuscript material. The papers of his close colleague, Peter Hiley, now in the possession of Hiley’s son, include an extensive essay on Olivier’s achievements and personality by his close friend and associate, Roger Furse.

The interviews which, for more than fifty hours, Mark Amory conducted with Laurence Olivier, provide one of the most important sources for this book. A few of these have been transcribed, the majority survive only on tape. Olivier spoke with total freedom and his personality emerges far more vividly than from his own writings or the recollections of other people.